the picture by turning hastily to his Political Resident to complain. But it was a thrilling moment, pregnant, as I remarked in the Oracle, with a new and unwonted interest. Then Mr. Twitchley Crowdie read an address, composed by Sir Rupert, and full of compliments and congratulations.
To this the great man replied in an eloquent oration, in which we were told that we were here presented with the best of all that East and West could produce. On one hand the products of India and all the splendour of the East; and, on the other, the spirit of order, the organisation, the spirit of progress, the genius of the Nineteenth Century and the passion of the present rulers of this country for beneficent, self-sacrificing labour, were offered for our consideration. This Exhibition was but the culmination and top-stone of a series of efforts to develop the resources, agricultural, commercial, artistic, industrial and economic, of a tract of country which, until a recent period, had been neglected. Then followed a brilliant sketch of the South-West Provinces, so skilfully touched in that it seemed as if the history of British India from the earliest periods had been shaping itself to no other issue than the glories of Sir Rupert Boldick's administration. Then everybody connected with the affair was praised—individually and collectively; in sections and groups; by committees and sub-divisions. The native gentlemen and Chiefs who exhibited were praised for their public spirit; and those who had purchased steam-ploughs and threshing machines were hailed with congratulations. The Raja of Pagulnuggur's energetic myrmidons had harried and looted his ryots of the best of their cereals, oil-seeds, tobacco and spices. He had bought a Shand and Mason's fire-engine—secretly intending to use it at the next Holi to pump gulál on the dusky Cyprians of his capital. So Pagulnuggur was eulogised as "a Prince of singular enlightenment, whose alert and beneficient intelligence, with the heaven gifted instinct of a natural ruler, had grasped the great Exhibit ion idea in its full significance." At the conclusion of the address a venerable Archdeacon stepped forward in his robes and read a prayer about brotherly love and the breaking down of the barriers between different races; and invoked a blessing on the undertaking. The artillerymen outside fired a salute, and the Ajaibgaum Exhibition was open!
And in sober earnest it was a very good Exhibition—so
